Back in the day

The Canadian Pacific Railway connects eastern Canada with British Columbia. Its completion fulfilled a promise made to British Columbia when it joined the Confederation in 1871. The railway included passenger and freight service to important urban areas and was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada. Today it also includes US hubs, such as New York, but its primary passenger service was dropped in 1978. Why was the image of a beaver chosen for the railway's logo?

Feature

Ping Pong originated in the late 19th century. First popular in England, it soon spread to several European countries and to the US. In 1926, the International Table Tennis Federation was founded to standardize rules and equipment. The sport won publicity in 1971 when a US team was invited to play in China, thereby initiating the first officially sanctioned Sino-American cultural exchange in almost 20 years. Table tennis inspired the first commercially successful video game, called what?

Born on a day like today

Trotsky was a crucial figure in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He was a Marxist intellectual and the founder of the Politburo and the Red Army, and his ideas form the basis of Trotskyism. Following a legendary power struggle with Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, Trotsky was exiled. While in Mexico, he wrote books criticizing Stalinism for its repressive nature and betrayal of the working class, and he was later assassinated by a Soviet agent. From whom did he borrow the name "Trotsky"?